


Unworthy

by Valaxiom



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Ableist Language, Angst, Bittersweet, F/F, Female Pronouns for the Reader, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Poor Reader, Self-Esteem Issues, listen I need to justify myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 17:45:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11972442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valaxiom/pseuds/Valaxiom
Summary: The hard choices the Reader must make to liberate her companions weigh on her heavily, particularly when she knows that there is no happy ending in store for her. When the final rite ends, the choice is no longer hers alone to make.





	Unworthy

**Author's Note:**

> Pyre is a beautiful game and I wish it was longer, but hey! At least there's fanfic! 
> 
> I wrote this partially to come to terms with my own guilt over choosing who was to be liberated, and who stayed behind. I'm still not sure if I made the right choices, but I suppose that's part of Pyre's appeal- hard choices and consequences. 
> 
> My Vagabond Girl's name is Nae.

The Reader did not hesitate to liberate her friends, to grant them the dubious freedom of the world above. For six grueling liberation rites, she toiled and planned and sent her friends away, back to the surface.

Hedwyn had gone first. He had been too kind, too eager to help a crippled young scholar who had known too much and been unable to flee when the Commonwealth had come for her. It had been Hedwyn who spent long hours testing new recipes, making the useless growth of the Downside edible, if not delicious. Hedwyn, perpetually bright even with all the shadows haunting their ragtag little gang. The Reader had seen him make Jodariel laugh. He had spent an afternoon listening solemnly as Nae described her latest conversation with the Scribes. He’d even painstakingly stitched together a pair of earmuffs for Rukey when the incessant tolling of the Blackwagon’s bell had gotten on the cur’s nerves.

Hedwyn hadn’t deserved to be tossed into the abyss, not for the crime of love. He had someone waiting for him above- he’d mentioned it offhandedly before, but the Reader hadn’t pushed the subject because she’d seen the way his eyes darkened, just a little, whenever the girl was referenced.

He had to go back. Volfred and his plan aside, Hedwyn deserved a second chance. Even Volfred agreed that charismatic, pleasant Hedwyn would do wonders for their campaign to remake the Commonwealth.

He had ascended, and they missed him.

Rukey had gone next. He clearly missed his family dearly, and even after they’d resolved his debt with the leader of the Dissidents, his anxiety for his mother was tangible. Sending him back was a mercy.

He joked and made light of the situation right up until the Reader sent him into the light. The mingled despair and gratitude and guilt in his eyes hurt like a dagger in the leg. The Reader did not hesitate, ushering her friend away, into the safety and warmth that awaited him.

The third rite was where the Reader had difficulty choosing for the first time. Nae, she loved too much- she couldn’t help it, the moontouched girl would be so lost on her own in the commonwealth above, just like before. Jodariel, for all her gruffness and her stern countenance, had become the Reader’s closest confidante. It was selfish, but she couldn’t bear to lose her either. Not yet: not after sending away both Rukey and Hedwyn.

Sir Gilman refused to leave, citing his honour. Ti’Zo laughed when she tried to bring it up with him. Volfred merely dodged the question, and Big Bertrude didn’t seem interested.

Pamitha was… not doing well. The Harp had given up on any reconciliation with her savage sister, and her reckless behavior in the rites was beginning to worry the Reader. The winged woman had become purposeless and dull, doing little aside from curling up in her corner of the barracks with her bottle of infinite moonshine. The ever-present despair of the Downside was taking its toll on her, and the Reader could be fairly certain that without a miracle, Pamitha would not last long.

The Harp’s pure disbelief when she was sent to the inverted fall forced the Reader to give her companion as sturdy a shove as she could muster towards the ascent.

Jodariel’s reaction to the absence of their Harp friend genuinely surprised the Reader. Initially, the two had refused to participate together, no matter how the Reader and the other Nightwings tried to reconcile them. Their grudging acceptance-turned-friendship of each other lasted a woefully short period before they were separated, and the Reader’s guilt at this may have had some influence on her next candidate.

“Jodariel.” When the Voice spoke her name, the Demon seemed bewildered.

“Why me?” she whispered to the Reader as she donned the white raiments. “I don’t deserve this.”

The Reader merely hugged her tightly, not allowing herself to cry until she was alone in the Blackwagon, sitting on Jodi’s rug with Pamitha’s moonshine and the very last travelling cake that Hedwyn had made. When Nae found the Reader sitting there miserably, they split the rockhard cake and Nae sat at her side until she finally fell asleep.

The guilt of choosing who to stay and who to go weighed on her heavily. The Reader spent every waking moment between rites pondering; who would survive the best if left behind? Big Bertude was not interested in leaving her thriving swamp business, so at least that was one person she didn’t have to abandon against their will in the Downside. Volfred, for all that he clearly wanted to go home and oversee his revolution, was self-sacrificing enough that he insisted on not going. Sir Gilman’s constant search for enlightenment meant that staying or going didn’t matter too much to him. Ti’Zo, though he clearly missed the others, was very comfortable in the Downside, haunting the Nightwings as their erstwhile companion. Nae couldn’t stay though- she was too kind, too soft, and now that the others were back in the Commonwealth, they would take care of her.

The Reader did not even consider her own fate. She knew fully well that once the rites ended, she would be here, in the dark, and she would probably die before the others. Her limping, twisted leg, her small frame, and her gasping lungs made it impossible for her to see any kind of role for herself after this was all over. But if she could just get them out… get enough of them out that no more inquisitive young girls were thrown into hell for the crime of literacy, then it was all worth it. No one else should have to ever endure what she’d gone through. She was a lost cause, and had long since come to terms with that, but the others mattered. They could change things. All the Reader could do was observe and make the awful choices that no one wanted to hear.

When she sent Nae into the light, she didn’t cry. She merely sat on the roof of the Blackwagon in the snow and felt herself grow numb.

She missed them. She missed them so much. All the books she’d greedily devoured before her exile had spoken of friendship, and love, and how the pain of being alone was nothing compared to the agony of being left behind. She hadn’t really understood until she’d seen her friends leave, heard their promises that she’d get out too, that they all would. She’d known from the start that her weak frame kept her from participating in the rites, and when Volfred revealed the rule that Readers were trapped below, she wasn’t surprised. Just resigned. She’d made peace, of sorts, with her fate, but it still ached.

Sandra helped a little. She at least provided some assurance that even when all was finished, she’d have some companionship for a while. She felt bad for Sandra though- the Beyonder had made the mistake of becoming friends with someone who probably wasn’t long for this world.

Volfred, with his awkwardly kind manner, was apologetic as he left. He whispered that they’d get her out somehow, but when she merely shook her head, he went quiet. He may have said more, about sacrifice and remembering and freedom, but the Reader didn’t take it in.

The days leading up to the final liberation rite felt like the days before an execution. In a sense, they were for her. What use was a crippled reader without the rites? At best, she’d wander aimlessly before dying from something mundane, like falling into quicksand or getting eaten by a giant plant.

Sandra tried to cheer her up. The Beyonder saw more and more of the Reader as the final night approached. After overcoming her fear of the Reader abandoning her, she’d grown to become one of her staunchest friends, both cajoling and scolding her into eating and sleeping and keeping up with the others. It was exhausting.

The Reader was exhausted. She didn’t sleep because the Voice kept whispering to her, about how all her friends would be killed for their insurgence, how the Downside was eternal, how this was what they deserved-

When the final rite ended (sorry Oralech, sorry, it’s not fair, I’m sorry-) and she was swaying from exhaustion and pain, she barely managed to choke out Ti’Zo’s name before the ground rushed up to hit her.

When she came to, with Ti’Zo’s anxious squeaking in her ear and Oralech’s strangely sorrowful unmasked face watching her, she was on the ground. There was blood coming from her nose, her legs wouldn’t stop shaking, and the knowledge that she looked utterly pathetic made her want to hurl herself off the cliff, to end it all-

“You go.” Oralech’s voice was quiet. She didn’t understand.

“No,” she croaked. “Ti’Zo-“

The imp laughed at her.

* _i’m staying, you’re going back above_.*

“No, I can’t- Nae misses you, I know she does, and Volfred will be glad to have you, and-“

When the imp dropped the pure white raiments on her lap, she watched without comprehension as the remaining Nightwings, past and present, stepped aside and made her a path to the falls.

“You will go,” Oralech said. He hoisted her up, surprisingly gentle, and Big Bertude and Sir Gilman helped her don the robes. By the time her shaking hands finished the last button, the robe was covered in blood. She managed to retain her hold on Sandra’s orb, and if Tariq noticed, he didn’t say a thing.

Oralech laughed, an oddly free sound. “The last exile to return, wearing red instead of white. How appropriate.”

The Reader couldn’t help but to agree.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and the guilt tore a hole through her stomach. “I don’t deserve this, I am not worthy-“

Ti’Zo, laughing, grabbed her by the arm with his talons and led her to the fall. It was very bright, and it hurt her eyes.

* _this isn’t your fault! we’ll be okay! tell them I say hi!_ *

She hesitated before stepping forward, looking back at her friends. 

The last thing the Reader saw before limping into the portal home was Ti’Zo, Bertude, and Gilman all smiling and waving. Well, Bertude wasn’t frowning. And Oralech, with his tired, pained eyes, nodded at her before turning towards the Blackwagon.

She ascended. 


End file.
